| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Captain Stormfield by Mark Twain: fifty million whites have died in America from the beginning up to
to-day - make it sixty, if you want to; make it a hundred million -
it's no difference about a few millions one way or t'other. Well,
now, you can see, yourself, that when you come to spread a little
dab of people like that over these hundreds of billions of miles of
American territory here in heaven, it is like scattering a ten-cent
box of homoeopathic pills over the Great Sahara and expecting to
find them again. You can't expect us to amount to anything in
heaven, and we DON'T - now that is the simple fact, and we have got
to do the best we can with it. The learned men from other planets
and other systems come here and hang around a while, when they are
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from An Inland Voyage by Robert Louis Stevenson: incompetent old rogue, with the manners of a gentleman, and the
vanity of an artist, to keep up his self-respect!
But the man after my own heart is M. de Vauversin. It is nearly
two years since I saw him first, and indeed I hope I may see him
often again. Here is his first programme, as I found it on the
breakfast-table, and have kept it ever since as a relic of bright
days:
'MESDAMES ET MESSIEURS,
'MADEMOISELLE FERRARIO ET M. DE VAUVERSIN AURONT L'HONNEUR DE
CHANTER CE SOIR LES MORCEAUX SUIVANTS.
'MADERMOISELLE FERRARIO CHANTERA - MIGNON - OISEAUX LEGERS - FRANCE
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Heart of the West by O. Henry: ascertained facts and legalised measures that beauty is to be found.
In this very log we sit upon, Mrs. Sampson," says I, "is statistics
more wonderful than any poem. The rings show it was sixty years old.
At the depth of two thousand feet it would become coal in three
thousand years. The deepest coal mine in the world is at Killingworth,
near Newcastle. A box four feet long, three feet wide, and two feet
eight inches deep will hold one ton of coal. If an artery is cut,
compress it above the wound. A man's leg contains thirty bones. The
Tower of London was burned in 1841."
"Go on, Mr. Pratt," says Mrs. Sampson. "Them ideas is so original and
soothing. I think statistics are just as lovely as they can be."
Heart of the West |
